Poet 8: Rita Dove

I found her poetry understandable.

She was the Poetry Laureate of the US 1993-1995. (http://people.virginia.edu/~rfd4b/)

I especially liked her series of poetry regarding "Thomas and Beulah." According to Wikipedia.com, "Thomas and Beulah is a book of poems by American poet Rita Dove that tells the semi-fictionalized chronological story of her maternal grandparents, the focus being on her grandfather (Thomas, his name in the book as well as in real life) in the first half and her grandmother (named Beulah in the book, although her real name was Georgianna) in the second. It won the 1987 Pulitzer Prize for poetry."

It is too long to quote here, but it is here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_and_Beulah

Liked this quote by her and find it accurate:

"We tend to be so bombarded with information, and we move so quickly, that there's a tendency to treat everything on the surface level and process things quickly. This is antithetical to the kind of openness and perception you have to have to be receptive to poetry. ... poetry seems to exist in a parallel universe outside daily life in America."

Rita Dove (b. 1952), U.S. poet. As quoted in the New York Times, sect. 4, p. 7 (June 20, 1993).